Page 61 of Necessary Space

There had to be an explanation.

“He had a key,” Grayson said.

I cleared my throat and brushed past him, back into the house, in search of my phone.

“I’m sure it’s not what you’re thinking,” I murmured.

Somehow, in the half hour since I’d made dinner plans with Hendrix for later that night, my phone had evaporated itself into thin air. It wasn’t next to my laptop and it wasn’t on the pile of reports I’d been using as reference for the meeting I’d been in when I texted him in the first place.

“Looking for this?” Grayson had my phone, pinched between his finger and thumb and held in front of him like it was a stinky diaper.

I pushed off the table and got to him before he could drop it, snatching it out of his hand protectively and taking it onto the back patio. I closed the door behind me, hoping it would encourage him to leave me alone. Admittedly, I was a little too frantic to call Hendrix off the bat. A little too “life flashing before my eyes” to talk to him without my voice shaking.

I knew there had to be an explanation.

I knew it.

But that didn’t stop that fucking miserable doubt at the base of my spine from twining higher toward my shoulders and my throat. Everything ached. Everything was tense, and I was more on edge that I could remember being.

Too invested is what I was.

But I’d told him I loved him and he’d basically said it back, so he was in just as deep as me. There wasn’t any going back from the things we’d said or done, and I was fairly certain my cum was still inside of him and this mysterious twink Grayson had seen was in his house…

At least the sheets would smell like me.

And he’d know that he wasn’t the first.

Beyond the fence, the sliding glass door at Hendrix’s slid open. I had to physically cover my mouth with my hand to stop myself from saying anything.

“I was going to get a hotel room,” a voice said, deeper than I’d imagined in my head at Grayson’s description of the stranger. “But he gave me his keys and told me to wait for him at home.”

My phone fell out of my hand and I let it fall onto the grass. Shoving my hair out of my face, I stalked toward the fence, pressing my ear against the wood.

“I’ll probably stay over,” he said. “But if he wants to enjoy a change of scenery, I’m happy to let him come stay at the hotel with me. This house is pretty run down.”

Therehadto be an explanation.

Grayson slid the slider open, his earlier smug expression leaning into something a little more apologetic—which I hated. I frowned at him, and he picked my phone up from the grass on his way to join me at the fence. I raised my finger to my mouth, gesturing for him to be quiet, and he gave me an understanding nod.

I swiped my phone open when the stranger next door laughed at something the person he was talking to must have said, and I texted Hendrix.

Me: Any requests for tonight? Or is it Dom’s choice?

Hendrix was quick to reply

Hendrix: Something’s come up. I need a rain check.

Grayson glared down at my screen and mouthed the wordsI bet he doesat me. I appreciated the way he tried to look sorry, but I knew him well enough to know that he wanted to tell me I told you so. He wanted to tell me I should have listened when he told me getting tested and being exclusive was stupid.

Me: Everything okay?

Hendrix: Yeah.

I dragged my tongue across the front of my teeth. Had he forgotten that we lived next door to each other? That even though the fence was six feet tall, the reason we were in a relationship with each other now was because the wood was thin enough for me to hear through? That I’d antagonized him that night because I was bored and he’d answered back and…

“I’ll make sure he has a good time,” the stranger in my boyfriend’s back yard said. “You know that making him loosen up is my favorite thing in the world.”

Loosen.